Web site usage via browsers is regularly tracked and analyzed by commercially available web analytics services, which gather detailed data about web page usage, and to some extent about particular web site users. Entities which provide other entities with web analytics services are referred to as “analytics providers”. One leading web analytics provider is Omniture, Inc., of Orem, Utah, the owner of the present invention. OMNITURE provides web analytics technology under its well-known mark SITECATALYST™. All other marks used herein are property of their respective owners.
At present web analytics data are typically collected from server logs or using web beacons. Web-beacons are small image requests placed in a web page to cause communication between the user's device and a server. The server may be controlled by the analytics provider, by the vendor whose website contains the web-beacons, or by another party. Web-beacons are also known as clear GIFs, web bugs, image requests, or pixel tags. Web-beacons can be used for advertising, behavioral targeting, and other processes, to gather information a visits to websites. Web-beacons are commonly used by analytics providers to gather analytics data.
In particular, in some known web-beacon-based analytics systems, a web-beacon was pasted into website pages to cause communication with a core JAVASCRIPT file on the customer server; web-beacons may also be hosted on other servers, such as analytics provider (Omniture) servers. The pasted web-beacon code was served on each HTML page the customer wished to track. The core JavaScript file was effectively included via the pasted code, allowing the customer to make some updates to the analytics data gathering process without having to re-tag the entire website.
In one simple and commonly found configuration, the entities involved with analytics are (a) the website visitor, (b) the vendor or other entity responsible for the website being visited by the user, and (c) the analytics provider that was retained by the vendor to obtain analytics data about visits to the website. More recent configurations have also involved (d) third-party advertisers or other entities. In some cases, these third party entities have partnered with the analytics provider, and the vendor is their shared customer.
As used herein, “analytics provider” refers to an entity that provides web analytics services, such as Omniture, or Omniture partners or competitors such as COREMETRICS, GOOGLE, NEDSTAT, WEBSIDESTORY, WEBTRENDS, EPIPHANY (SSA GLOBAL), NETRATINGS, SANE SOLUTIONS (UNICA), SAS INSTITUTE, AQUANTIVE, DOUBLECLICK, and 24/7 REAL MEDIA. “Partner” refers here to an entity which has a formal business relationship with the analytics provider; in the case of analytics provider Omniture, some of the many examples of partners or potential partners are ADVERTISING.COM and BAYNOTE. The term ‘co-customer’ refers to a vendor or other shared customer of the analytics provider and the partner; in the case of analytics provider Omniture, an example of a potential co-customer is AOL.
However, when a partner needed real-time data about website visits via their own web-beacon to provide a desired service to the co-customer, re-tagging has been used. That is, the partner's own web-beacon was pasted into the website pages, in addition to the analytics provider web-beacon. Such re-tagging can require a large investment, which may in turn impede the sales cycle for partners of the analytics provider, and often creates additional expense and delay for the co-customer. As an alternative for partners who don't require their own web-beacon, Omniture and other companies commonly provide bulk data feeds to the partner, which does not require re-tagging. In other words, a partner can collect data regarding co-customer website usage in several ways: collect it directly themselves via their own web-beacon (or by processing server logs), or collect it directly from the co-customer via some sort of data feed, or collect it from a third party (e.g., Omniture or other analytics provider) with the co-customer's permission via a data feed. Of course, another alternative to retagging is to do without the partner's services. Another alternative would be to modify the core JavaScript file in an ad hoc way by adding code inline to the body of that file to gather data requested by the partner, and then sending the resulting data to the partner.
Other concepts related to the present invention may be known, or become apparent through sources other than this background, including without limitation the references being made of record in connection with the present patent application.